Health officials in Malawi start distributing medicine after reports of strange disease.

Report by Gloria Masanza. 

Health officials in Malawi are currently moving from one house to another, providing drugs, following reports of a strange disease.

The disease which is said to cause swelling of victims’ private parts, has caused alarm among many Malawians.

However, without informing the nation, government has embarked on a campaign to provide medication, in response to the strange disease.

The health practitioners are providing the medication in almost each and every household in the southern region.

However officials in the ministry of health have assured people in the country not to panic, with the medical personnel, going around and providing drugs to members, in some households across the country.

The remarks come in the wake of public complaints after the government medical workers dumped vaccination drugs in several homes in the suburbs of Blantyre and other centres without explanation.

Some households reported that they had been told by medical personnel that the drugs was to counter a strange outbreak, which was causing parts of the body, especially in the genital areas, to swell.

Others claimed that it was a government sponsored campaign, to make people infertile, as a means of keeping down the country’s swelling population.

But director of preventive health services in the ministry of health, Storn Kabuluzi, dismissed such reports as misleading.

Kabuluzi however confirmed, that government medical personnel are indeed moving from door to door, providing drugs to people in some parts of the country.

Kabuluzi explained that this is a campaign to prevent the country’s from the rare but dangerous ailments called Onkokeasis and Limphaliasis.

He said although the diseases are not common, Onkokeasis has serious implications on patients, including causing blindness.

The disease is largely common in Chiradzulu, Mwanza, Thyolo, Mulanje, Zomba and Chikwawa in the southern region part of the Malawi.

According to Kabuluzi, during the campaign, people are being provided with two drugs namely Icemectin and Albendazole.

The reports about the strange disease come against another reported appearance of a strange disease that has killed four Zambians who were living in South Africa.

The four were said to have developed a flu and high fevers, which then lead to their deaths.

The development caused alarm among Zambia’s neighbouring countries, including Malawi, which is said to have set measure to counter the disease if it attacks people in the country.